The Legend of Zelda Mobile Game in Development at Nintendo

Following the incredible success of the Switch’s Breath of the Wild, it seems that Nintendo are already developing a new The Legend of Zelda game, this time for mobile devices. A new report from The Wall Street Journal claims that a new Zelda title will be released on smartphones sometime after the launch of the Animal Crossing mobile game, which is expected to debut later this year.

Unfortunately, the report doesn’t offer any information about what the game will entail, nor whether the title will adopt the one-time purchase approach of Super Mario Run or the Free-to-Play model of Fire Emblem Heroes, but there’s already little doubt that another The Legend of Zelda game will gather a lot of attention. Nintendo’s mobile gaming industry is just beginning to take its first steps, but that’s not stopping the company from already using its biggest names to attract the long-time fans.

Last month, Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima made the announcement that the company would be looking to release two to three new smartphone games in the remainder of the financial year, which ends March 2018. Assuming that Animal Crossing is next on the list, the upcoming Zelda title can’t be too far in the future, and it seems we’ll have yet another Nintendo launch coming relatively shortly afterwards.

In the past, the Big N has announced that it prefers the one-time purchase method when it comes to acquiring its mobile titles. This allows players to buy the game at a set cost, bypassing the need for annoying microtransactions, but raising the initial cost of the app significantly.

Despite this claim, it seems that Fire Emblem Heroes is more profitable than Super Mario Run due to its dedicated fanbase, which may have the developer changing its mind when it comes to future games. To the company’s credit, none of the major smartphone games released so far have seen excessive in-app purchases, though the concept is still off-putting to many gamers.